Crushed grain extremely finely with Corona mill. Very floury.
Brought 8.850L to 92C.
Lots of dough balls at mash in. Still at 85C after 10 minutes of stirring. Added another 1.5L cold water to a total of 10.350L, which was at 70.9C. Mashed with lid off to allow it to drop more. “Batch Sparge” was selected in BrewTarget, and should not have been.
Added another 200g crushed belgian pale ale malt @67C to make sure there are at least some living enzymes. Let it drop to 66C. Kept it in the 65.5-66.5C range for an hour.
Slowly brought to 72C for mash out.
Squeezed the living hell out of the bag with a glass bowl. Didn't measure runoff, but it seemed about right. Topped off with 3L.
Saaz and El Dorado are pellet hops, Calypso is whole-leaf.
All hopping done in muslin bags.
OG: 1.073 @34C == 1.076. Very high!? Can't be right, that's like 150% efficiency. Possible bad hydrometer.
Taste during gravity reading is surprisingly bitter.
Pitched an extra ~2L of yeast starter @ 28C, for a total of about 26.5L in the bucket.
Added 1 large ginger root, sliced, and 1kg boiled frozen cherries.
Bubbling began after ~4 hours.
Beer in the blow-off cup and frequent, heavy gurgling @24 hours. (temp 22-23C in ambient 18C)
@48 hours: Bubbling reduced to once every 5 minutes. Temp at 21C. Added 1.3kg boiled cherries.
@72 hours: No audible bubbling, temp at 21C.
By day 5 stabilized to 18C.
Checked gravity at 15 days: 1.012 @ 20C.
Bottled 2014-12-28 (22 days) w/ 128g table sugar cubes. FG: 1.012 @ 19C.